Ellis Park set to kick off racing season

Photos by ERIN McCRACKEN / COURIER & PRESS
Abigail Brown kisses Burr Jimmy as she fills up his water bucket after a morning of training at Ellis Park on Wednesday. Brown, who works for William Stinson Farms, was helping to get the horses ready for race season which begins today.

ERIN McCRACKEN / COURIER & PRESS
Sizzling Jazz eats some grass after finishing her morning exercise routine on Wednesday at Ellis Park. Sizzling Jazz won’t be racing this week when races open today but will make her debut in a week or two.

ERIN McCRACKEN / COURIER & PRESS
Tom Keyes, assistant trainer at Campbell Farms, washes “Don’t Abandon Faith” after running him around the track for exercise at Ellis Park on Wednesday. Keyes spends his days, exercising and tending to a dozen horses so they are happy, healthy and ready to race. “ A happy horse is a running horse,” Keyes said.

ERIN McCRACKEN / COURIER & PRESS
Billy Stinson, trainer at William Stinson Farms, conditions the hooves of “Spice of Life” as he works to prepare his horses for the opening of the racing season at Ellis Park on Wednesday. Racing starts today at Ellis Park.

Tom Keyes, assistant trainer at Campbell Farms, takes “Don’t Abandon Faith” back to the stables after an exercise run around the track at Ellis Park. Life on the backside of Ellis is in full swing as trainers and jockey’s prepare for this season.

HENDERSON, Ky. - As the live racing season at Ellis Park kicks off on Thursday, a few changes are coming to the Western Kentucky thoroughbred track.

In previous years, rumors were circulating within the racing community that Ellis was going to cut its purse money. However, this past year, Ellis was awarded $300,000 from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund to help prevent the need to cut purses.

"We will be adding $5,000 to all of our maiden allowance races, and then we're going to add two more stake races that are $200,000 each," said Bob Jackson, Ellis Park operations manager. "We're actually going to be increasing purses in the second half of our meet."

And in the future, the track expects revenue from instant racing machines to help improve racing purses. In March, Ellis took back management of the machines from a minority partner, Saratoga Casino and Raceway, and has revamped the gaming area.

Jackson said 50 machines were taken off the floor.

"I had one machine paying $25,000 a week and a machine next to it paying $2,500 a week," he said. "The ones that were under performing, we took off the floor."

Jackson said the park compared the machine usage this year to 2013, and in June of 2014 usage was up by 67 percent compared to June of 2013.

To help celebrate a new racing season, Ellis is giving 6,200 mystery vouchers to regular players.

"Regular players can check with a mutual clerk, and they run it through the machine and it's guaranteed to be worth at least $2 or it could be worth up to $1,000," Jackson said.

Live racing begins Thursday with the post time at 12:50 p.m. Races run Friday through Sunday until Labor Day.